Doctor Who: Capsule Reviews
Dec. 27th, 2023 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatIt turns out I haven't written a Doctor Who episode review since Legend of the Sea Devils, so here are my thoughts on the episodes since then!
The Power of the Doctor
After this aired I told people "I'm not sure it was good, but I enjoyed it immensely!". I'm now pretty sure it's not that good. The Doctor is oddly passive, as she was throughout Chibnall's run, and this doesn't feel like a character point in the way it was for the ninth Doctor, but more a writer more comfortable with writing dialogue than action - and not even always dialogue, there is a tendency in Chibnall's writing for plot and backstory to be revealed through long speeches (most notably when The Master explains the whole timeless child thing to the Doctor) that can relegate characters to recipients of information rather than protagonists. Honestly, The Power of the Doctor, wasn't that bad in this regard, but it didn't feel like the final hurrah for a Doctor in the way it should have been.
The plot doesn't make a great deal of sense - and yes, I'm a Doctor Who fan, I should be used to this, but it had the kind of garbled, "let's just do lots of stuff" feel that a lot of The Flux had which means you really have to suspend a lot of critical faculties to properly enjoy it. No idea what a forced regeneration is supposed to be or mean.
Janet Fielding has many admirable qualities, but she is not an actress of the calibre that Doctor Who now attracts. This was a shame because she had some of the meatier stuff in the episode and, for me, it lacked conviction.
Vinder is not as interesting a character as Chibnall seems to think.
It was a lot of fun though. Yaz saving the day was great! Though - note earlier point - I'd have like to see the Doctor get something like this to do! The old Doctors reappearing was lovely. Seeing Ace and Tegan again was a lot of fun. It was nice to see the Fugitive Doctor again - even as a hologram. The Rasputin dance...
So, yes, it wasn't particularly good but it was heaps of fun and I enjoyed it immensely.
The Start Beast
Honestly, its as hard to see how this one could go wrong. The original comic story seemed like a gift to RTD with Disney money behind him and the Meep seemed like a role Miriam Margolyes was born to play. All RTD really needed to do was indulge the silliness and spectacle and flesh out the role of Sharon/Rose's family. I'm not saying that was easy, but it seems like a thing that plays to RTD's strengths. It was a shame we lost the Meep's evil internal monologue (apparently a note from Disney) but apart from that I had no real complaints. I liked the way the Fourteenth Doctor was shown to be a little more calm and less prone to grandstanding (only a little) than the Tenth. I thought the resolution to the meta-crisis worked well - I thought RTD had written himself into a bit of a corner there, and he got out of it pretty elegantly (a bit of gender-essentialism notwithstanding, but possibly that was a character point). I like the new dynamic of the Temple-Noble family. It was meant to be fun and not too serious and succeeded well.
Wild Blue Yonder
I've seen a lot of people compare Wild Blue Yonder to Midnight and while I see the similarity, I think the differences are more important than the similarities. Midnight is by some way the better of the two. The both have small casts (very small in the case of Wild Blue Yonder), have mimicry as a plot point and depend for their success upon strong central performances. Midnight feels like it is about something though, mostly how RTD feels about the human race when he's feeling cynical and not shouting "fantastic" at every opportunity while Wild Blue Yonder didn't really. Wild Blue Yonder was very well made and performed, and delivered family friendly scares at an appropriate level. It did exactly what it set out to do. I appreciated that it chose to explicitly acknowledge the timeless child and Flux stuff (since many thought, though on what basis I'm not quite sure, that RTD would quietly ignore everything introduced by the Chibnall era). They're not my favourite things but I don't particularly object to them. It was a great smaller episode between two big spectacle stories, but I don't quite get the enthusiasm for it I'm seeing from some quarters.
Worth it for Bernard Cribbins at the end, of course.
The Giggle
I was a bit disappointed by The Giggle. I'd been looking forward to a revisit to the Toymaker, unconstrained by what could be achieved in a small 1960s television studio on a minuscule budget. What we got was... a game of cards and a game of catch which seemed a bit of a waste of the concept. Neil Patrick Harris was obviously having a lot of fun, and it was nice to see the new UNIT set up and the return of Mel but my reaction to the central plot was basically "is that it?". Plot was never RTDs strength, particularly when spectacle and plot were needed, so I'm not sure what I was expecting here. I'm quite a plot focused person and I enjoyed The Star Beast the best of these three where it is notable that the bones of the plot came from elsewhere.
As for the Bi-generation - I'm still working out what I feel about that. In some ways it feels more disruptive to the show than the timeless child, though at least I have some confidence that RTD is going somewhere with it - if only enabling cameos from past Doctors without having to explain why they look older. Ncuti Gatwa as reassuringly good in his first appearance. A lot has been written about how it does him a disservice to have to share the limelight with a previous incarnation for such an extended time, and I can see that criticism. Still I thought he more than held his own, very much the Doctor from the off.
The Church on Ruby Road
The family enjoyed this more than I, but that's fine, it probably means it was a good story for the Christmas Day audience. There was nothing I disliked about it, but I felt it was slow in places and more time than was necessary was spent in articulating the emotional beats of the story. Ncuti Gatwa was great, Millie Gibson was fine but I'm not yet completely sold on her. I love a musical number so I had no issue with the singing goblins and while the whole goblin concept was at the fringes of what I think the show can bear in terms of the outright fantastical, I think it just about got away with it. For all my reservations about the timeless child, I like that this is clearly going to be something going forward - RTD is not just going to acknowledge it but really make it a part of the fabric of the show. It feels much more meaningful already than it did in Chibnall's hands, despite being his idea.
A PhD student of mine from Columbia, had expressed an interest in watching Doctor Who and I recommended she not watch the specials (which I thought likely to be quite continuity laden) but start with the Christmas Day special which I assumed would be designed as a jumping on point in the same way that Rose was. I'm not convinced it really was, I'll have to see if she watched it and followed it when she gets back. But I wasn't that convinced by Rose when it was first shown and here we are lo these many years later, so what do I know?
The Mavity thing is going to get annoying very fast.
I've always been more a Moffat fan than an RTD fan, and I don't think that is going to change. There was lots I enjoyed about these new Doctor Whos and there was lots here that reminded me both of what I enjoyed and what I didn't about his original run on the show. The whole thing feels more confident than the 2005 series, and I have more of a sense that there is something RTD very much wants to do here. He's certainly prepared to be much more up front about his politics than he was in 2005 - and there is evidence that his politics has matured somewhat as well, though not perhaps his tendency to outright dismiss opposing opinions. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what comes next.
The Power of the Doctor
After this aired I told people "I'm not sure it was good, but I enjoyed it immensely!". I'm now pretty sure it's not that good. The Doctor is oddly passive, as she was throughout Chibnall's run, and this doesn't feel like a character point in the way it was for the ninth Doctor, but more a writer more comfortable with writing dialogue than action - and not even always dialogue, there is a tendency in Chibnall's writing for plot and backstory to be revealed through long speeches (most notably when The Master explains the whole timeless child thing to the Doctor) that can relegate characters to recipients of information rather than protagonists. Honestly, The Power of the Doctor, wasn't that bad in this regard, but it didn't feel like the final hurrah for a Doctor in the way it should have been.
The plot doesn't make a great deal of sense - and yes, I'm a Doctor Who fan, I should be used to this, but it had the kind of garbled, "let's just do lots of stuff" feel that a lot of The Flux had which means you really have to suspend a lot of critical faculties to properly enjoy it. No idea what a forced regeneration is supposed to be or mean.
Janet Fielding has many admirable qualities, but she is not an actress of the calibre that Doctor Who now attracts. This was a shame because she had some of the meatier stuff in the episode and, for me, it lacked conviction.
Vinder is not as interesting a character as Chibnall seems to think.
It was a lot of fun though. Yaz saving the day was great! Though - note earlier point - I'd have like to see the Doctor get something like this to do! The old Doctors reappearing was lovely. Seeing Ace and Tegan again was a lot of fun. It was nice to see the Fugitive Doctor again - even as a hologram. The Rasputin dance...
So, yes, it wasn't particularly good but it was heaps of fun and I enjoyed it immensely.
The Start Beast
Honestly, its as hard to see how this one could go wrong. The original comic story seemed like a gift to RTD with Disney money behind him and the Meep seemed like a role Miriam Margolyes was born to play. All RTD really needed to do was indulge the silliness and spectacle and flesh out the role of Sharon/Rose's family. I'm not saying that was easy, but it seems like a thing that plays to RTD's strengths. It was a shame we lost the Meep's evil internal monologue (apparently a note from Disney) but apart from that I had no real complaints. I liked the way the Fourteenth Doctor was shown to be a little more calm and less prone to grandstanding (only a little) than the Tenth. I thought the resolution to the meta-crisis worked well - I thought RTD had written himself into a bit of a corner there, and he got out of it pretty elegantly (a bit of gender-essentialism notwithstanding, but possibly that was a character point). I like the new dynamic of the Temple-Noble family. It was meant to be fun and not too serious and succeeded well.
Wild Blue Yonder
I've seen a lot of people compare Wild Blue Yonder to Midnight and while I see the similarity, I think the differences are more important than the similarities. Midnight is by some way the better of the two. The both have small casts (very small in the case of Wild Blue Yonder), have mimicry as a plot point and depend for their success upon strong central performances. Midnight feels like it is about something though, mostly how RTD feels about the human race when he's feeling cynical and not shouting "fantastic" at every opportunity while Wild Blue Yonder didn't really. Wild Blue Yonder was very well made and performed, and delivered family friendly scares at an appropriate level. It did exactly what it set out to do. I appreciated that it chose to explicitly acknowledge the timeless child and Flux stuff (since many thought, though on what basis I'm not quite sure, that RTD would quietly ignore everything introduced by the Chibnall era). They're not my favourite things but I don't particularly object to them. It was a great smaller episode between two big spectacle stories, but I don't quite get the enthusiasm for it I'm seeing from some quarters.
Worth it for Bernard Cribbins at the end, of course.
The Giggle
I was a bit disappointed by The Giggle. I'd been looking forward to a revisit to the Toymaker, unconstrained by what could be achieved in a small 1960s television studio on a minuscule budget. What we got was... a game of cards and a game of catch which seemed a bit of a waste of the concept. Neil Patrick Harris was obviously having a lot of fun, and it was nice to see the new UNIT set up and the return of Mel but my reaction to the central plot was basically "is that it?". Plot was never RTDs strength, particularly when spectacle and plot were needed, so I'm not sure what I was expecting here. I'm quite a plot focused person and I enjoyed The Star Beast the best of these three where it is notable that the bones of the plot came from elsewhere.
As for the Bi-generation - I'm still working out what I feel about that. In some ways it feels more disruptive to the show than the timeless child, though at least I have some confidence that RTD is going somewhere with it - if only enabling cameos from past Doctors without having to explain why they look older. Ncuti Gatwa as reassuringly good in his first appearance. A lot has been written about how it does him a disservice to have to share the limelight with a previous incarnation for such an extended time, and I can see that criticism. Still I thought he more than held his own, very much the Doctor from the off.
The Church on Ruby Road
The family enjoyed this more than I, but that's fine, it probably means it was a good story for the Christmas Day audience. There was nothing I disliked about it, but I felt it was slow in places and more time than was necessary was spent in articulating the emotional beats of the story. Ncuti Gatwa was great, Millie Gibson was fine but I'm not yet completely sold on her. I love a musical number so I had no issue with the singing goblins and while the whole goblin concept was at the fringes of what I think the show can bear in terms of the outright fantastical, I think it just about got away with it. For all my reservations about the timeless child, I like that this is clearly going to be something going forward - RTD is not just going to acknowledge it but really make it a part of the fabric of the show. It feels much more meaningful already than it did in Chibnall's hands, despite being his idea.
A PhD student of mine from Columbia, had expressed an interest in watching Doctor Who and I recommended she not watch the specials (which I thought likely to be quite continuity laden) but start with the Christmas Day special which I assumed would be designed as a jumping on point in the same way that Rose was. I'm not convinced it really was, I'll have to see if she watched it and followed it when she gets back. But I wasn't that convinced by Rose when it was first shown and here we are lo these many years later, so what do I know?
The Mavity thing is going to get annoying very fast.
I've always been more a Moffat fan than an RTD fan, and I don't think that is going to change. There was lots I enjoyed about these new Doctor Whos and there was lots here that reminded me both of what I enjoyed and what I didn't about his original run on the show. The whole thing feels more confident than the 2005 series, and I have more of a sense that there is something RTD very much wants to do here. He's certainly prepared to be much more up front about his politics than he was in 2005 - and there is evidence that his politics has matured somewhat as well, though not perhaps his tendency to outright dismiss opposing opinions. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what comes next.